Language Learning and Development ( IF 1.480 ) Pub Date : 2021-04-06 , DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1909483 Erica H. Wojcik 1
ABSTRACT
Children often hear many new words in one conversation, and yet word learning research overwhelmingly focuses on how children learn and retrieve the meanings of single words. The current experiment tests how the number of labeled objects affects preschoolers’ novel word referent selection immediately after encoding and after a one-week delay. Seventy 3- to 6-year-olds were exposed to four novel objects. Half of the participants were given novel labels for two of the objects and half were given novel labels for all four. Label-referent mapping was tested with a four alternative forced-choice pointing task both immediately after exposure and one week later. Children performed worse overall after a week delay, replicating past work on novel word retention. While children performed significantly worse overall in the Four-Label condition, exploratory analyses revealed that this effect was driven solely by the second test trial immediately after exposure. Analyses suggest that referent selection is strongly influenced by in-the-moment constraints, such as label salience and pragmatic biases, and that these constraints are strongest immediately after novel word exposure.
中文翻译:
标记对象的数量对短时延迟和长时滞的新参考选择的影响
摘要
孩子们经常在一次对话中听到许多新词,但单词学习研究绝大多数都集中在孩子如何学习和检索单个单词的含义上。当前的实验测试了标记对象的数量如何影响学龄前儿童在编码后立即和延迟一周后的新词指称选择。70 名 3 至 6 岁的儿童接触了四种新颖的物品。一半的参与者被赋予了两个物体的新标签,而一半的参与者被赋予了所有四个物体的新标签。在暴露后立即和一周后,使用四种替代的强制选择指向任务测试了标签参照映射。延迟一周后,孩子们的整体表现更差,重复了过去在新词保留方面的工作。虽然儿童在四标签条件下的整体表现明显较差,探索性分析表明,这种效果完全是由暴露后立即进行的第二次试验驱动的。分析表明,所指选择受到即时约束的强烈影响,例如标签显着性和语用偏见,并且这些约束在新词暴露后立即最强。